SIX African leaders are set to hold talks with Kiev and Moscow next month to “initiate a peace process.”

Jean-Yves Ollivier, an international negotiator who has been helping to co-ordinate the initiative, said on Sunday that the African leaders would also discuss easing the passage of more grain shipments out of Ukraine and the possibility of more prisoner swaps.

As Mr Ollivier arrived in Moscow for preliminary talks with high-level officials to work out “logistics” for the talks, he said the peace mission would likely begin in June.

He is planning to travel on to Kiev for discussions with Ukrainian officials including the arrangements for the six African presidents to travel to Kiev by night train from Poland amid the fighting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have both agreed to separately host the delegation of presidents from South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Republic of Congo, Uganda and Zambia.

The talks also have the approval of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, the African Union and China, Ollivier said on Friday.

Neither side in the war appears ready to stop fighting, though.

Russia is believed to have taken the key eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after fierce fighting, but this has been denied by the Ukrainians.

“We are not dreamers,” Mr Ollivier said on the chances that the African leaders will achieve an immediate breakthrough with regard to stopping the 15-month conflict. 

He said: “Unless something happens, I don’t think we are going to finish our first mission with a ceasefire.”

Mr Ollivier is a Frenchman who played a role in bringing opposing sides together in high-stakes negotiations in the late 1980s that helped end apartheid in South Africa.

The African mission is not the only mediation effort. China offered its own peace plan in February and a Chinese envoy has been in discussions with Ukrainian and Russian officials.